Slavery and Reparations

The beginning of European settlement of the Americas from 1492 was marked by an extensive demand for labor. That need was met, over the first two-hundred years of colonialism by:

• Imprisoning, transporting and subjugating African peoples to a system of slavery that imposed torture and confinement on them while guaranteeing white landowners free labor;
• Evicting Native Americans from their ancestral lands and extracting resources from them including unpaid labor;
• Indenturing poverty-stricken European immigrants to their employers in a form of servitude that indebted poor whites to the wealthy and expected their loyalty to Europe’s aristocracy.

In the late 1600s, the class structures of the Americas became more restrictive and formalized

according to a racist hierarchy that violated human rights in pursuit of profits for white landowners.

How and why did this transformation occur? Bryan Stevenson’s film, Slavery to Mass Incarceration, contends that reparations should be paid to individuals, families, and communities who were traumatized and exploited by the labor codes and practices established in the period after 1492. Write a five-page paper that addresses the question of whether reparations will, finally, serve justice. Be specific about the particular losses that must be compensated and the form those reparations should take. Include references to specific events in the past and deadlines for reconciliation in the present and future. In your response, be  sure to base your claims on materials read in the assigned readings (you do not need to read additional sources for this assignment.